And that's not counting the Embassy Suites being planned on a parcel of Summit-owned land on Front Street next to the Morgan Keegan Tower.

"It's reassuring when a very experienced and high-quality hotel developer like Summit continues to expand in the marketplace," Center City Commission president Jeff Sanford said. "Summit is a proven operator and has shown time and again that they are putting quality rooms in Downtown."

Current economic factors mean this may not be the best time to bring a new property on line. Toward that end, Summit president Greg Averbuch said "we would probably be looking at this differently" if his company had not been "a dedicated part of the Downtown redevelopment process for over a decade."

Summit, which received a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes incentives from the Center City Revenue Finance Commission for its latest project, will now have three different brands operating under the same management.

"The properties serve different areas of need in the hospitality industry," Averbuch said. "There's a wider breadth of traveler, so we have a wider breadth of product."

The synergy among Summit's properties will allow them to both limit operating costs and work together when conventions or large groups come to town.

When the Embassy Suites opens, Summit will have about 550 rooms with three different brands (Choice, Hilton and Marriott) pumping reservations into the same managing company.

Chuck Pinkowski, president of Pinkowski and Co., a Memphis hospitality consulting firm, said Summit will then be in a position to target a wide range of individual travelers or groups when such opportunities arise.

The current economic situation notwithstanding, Sanford said, "Downtown Memphis needs more first-class hotel rooms to support what has been a growing meeting and convention business."

Averbuch is hopeful that the Courtyard's scheduled opening late next year will coincide with a rebound in the lodging industry, which has experienced markedly lower occupancy rates at most service levels over the past year.

"Our industry is a cyclical industry and obviously we are in a cycle," Averbuch said. "Developments are long term from beginning to fruition. You want to have product coming out when you're on the positive side of the cycle."

In the meantime, Averbuch said Summit intends to continue with its Downtown development efforts, which focus on turning Court Square into the "vibrant center of the city."

"We saw a serious commitment to revitalizing Downtown supported by different agencies, different forms of government," he said of Summit's original decision to invest here. "We still think there's a lot to be accomplished."